I almost forgot I had a leap post due today. I’ve written a post every
leap day on this blog, and I intend to keep it up forever.

I don’t think computers and software are going to get us very far until
we commit to text files for everything. (Okay, maybe we’ll keep
databases, as long as we can just run SQL — or whatever — directly
against them when needed.)

I’m working on a brain-deadening task this week with a GUI program. It’s
a simple task on the surface, but there’s no way to copy and paste or
speed things along. You have to keep clicking, clicking, clicking on
things about ten thousand times. I don’t mind some kinds of busy work as
long as you can automate it with a little script or something, or be
efficient about it somehow. I hate when you have to mindlessly do
something in the most stupid and boring effing way imaginable. With
access to a flat source file, XML or otherwise, this task would be
nothing. Instead, I’m wasting time agonizing over it, avoiding it,
fighting it, occasionally doing it, and now, writing about it. (And
worst of all, boring you about it. Why should you care?)

That’s apropos of nothing.

That’s what happens on leap posts.

And it’s negative. Sorry about that. I can be critical and nitpicky, and
sometimes I enjoy other people ragging on people or things, but then I
also tire of it. I don’t necessarily want to be relentlessly positive
and uplifting, but I think I might be better off creating something new
or trying to better understand people and things than complaining and criticizing.

But then I have to comment on something I wrote last leap day:

“Lost is so freaking cool,” I said. Meaning the TV show. But now I’m
going to be critical and say that it ended up being a disappointment to
me. A large one. The disenchantment grew over the last season and peaked
in the final episode. I felt cheated. It wasn’t good science fiction at
all, as I thought it was in the beginning. I loved the characters. The
characters and their individual stories along with the mysteries made
the show great for me and made me care, but then they didn’t deliver on
the overall story. (In my humble and surely misguided opinion.) But
that’s all in the past and now I only bitterly resent it a little bit
from time to time. I just bring it up because I noticed my comment from
four years ago. For a review that touches on (and clarified for me) my
own objections, there is, “LOST: An Evaluation.” (With spoilers, of course.)

I was listening to sleet and wind hitting the side of the house last
night, which caused a dream in which we woke up to some sections of our
roof missing. I wasn’t that upset about it in the dream. I was happy
we’d be getting a new roof.